Month: May 2014

It’s been a rather hectic week here at JFC, which unfortunately means I haven’t had the opportunity to conjure up a proper post, far less the two I was aiming for.

Every cloud, however, has a silver lining and this particular batch of cumulo-nimbus is no exception. It’s all very well me banging on about writing and marketing and suchlike, but the proof of the pudding is in the reading, if you’ll excuse the mangling of a metaphor. It’s time to put my money where my mouth is and offer up a snippet of my own writing.

So, without further ado, allow me to introduce the beginning of Chapter 1 from Dark Energies – my soon-to-be-self-published first novel:

Why am I writing this? An excellent question. Maybe to try and make sense of the events of the past few months by putting them in some kind of order. Maybe to diminish the fear and confusion by sharing them with someone else. Or maybe just to convince myself that there is still a real, mundane world out there somewhere, by picturing you, my friends, sitting with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine on a comforting sofa, calmly and rationally reading this account. By the way, I hope you’ll allow me the indulgence of calling you friends. Because, right at the moment, I need all the friends I can get.

Another question: How did this start? Before we’re through, there will be a whole lot more. This is where I could opt for the classic opening territory of “Once upon a time…” or “In a land far far way…” If only both of those were true, then my situation would be a lot easier to deal with. Knowing how this all ends would also comfort me greatly. But it isn’t once upon a time, it’s not far away and it certainly hasn’t ended yet. So I’ll go back to where it did begin and ask you to stick with me through this.